Dragons Trampled My iPad...

Leticia Hernandez reading at Avid Reader Sunday, April 17
—Today’s Photos are by Michelle Kunert, Sacramento

WHO
—Taylor Graham, Placerville, CA

Which kind of owl was calling
before dawn, as I opened the door
to let the dog back in?
Soft, a flutter of sound out of dark like
wind caught in the leafing of trees
and grasses forever spring-greening
out of winter, night—roots and tubers,
the dead still nurturing in death.
Screech owl?
Call of life that draws us back
into the world of soil and mulching,
seeding. Which owl?
calling names out of the midst
of messy life, spring-mud weighting
boots and fingers.

__________________

BOOTS OFF THE TRAIL
—Taylor Graham

Those boots bore me summer-long searching
up Iron Mountain and down North-South
Road, I stopped at turn-outs and logging decks,
let my dog out of the car to check old fire pits,
hiked the dust of rutted skid trails. No sign
of you. I didn’t find you at Stonebreaker
Creek where foxglove and columbine nod
their secrets of green in the shade of running
water. You weren’t among the boulders
at Capps Crossing, or the trail to Blue Gouge
Mine. Not a trace of you at Henrys Diggins
or down Dogtown Creek. My dog showed me
stubbed-out cigarette butts and rusting cans.
Above Fleming Meadow, I felt a shiver
of breeze like ghost-breath in September, as if
you might have passed here. My boots never
asked where we were going. They just put
one foot in front of the other as my dog and I
checked off blanks of stillness on the map.

 Paul Aponte reading at Avid Reader Sunday, April 17

ROOM UNDERGROUND
—Taylor Graham

The place is haunted, of course, and cold.
Deep underground, almost beyond recollection
of daylight. They used to keep ice here,
drayed down from mountain lakes and stored
in caverns and tunnels, a maze of winter.
Sparse light ensconced at intervals
along the passageways. They say,
after the advent of refrigerators, only poets
came here, gathering in a cavern carved
out of bedrock, to work the dark by miner’s
headlamp; to listen for voices from
even deeper. A few of those poets remember
still. The place is haunted by words
that fly out at night, hunting the living world,
sparking fireflies if not stars.

_________________

STAR OVERHEAD
—Taylor Graham

Girded with dawnlight
in this small corner of the world, and dubbed
with the flat stroke of a pen, we set out
errant on separate paths following the same star.

I prowed through knee-high grasses
in need of cutting. Verbiage!
Hazards along the way. Rocks under thistle.
Dragons trampled my iPad, its face

imploding in fractured stars, light
that flakes in my hand. Time rolls in waves
of our great Earth tiding, crazy
with green distances. Beg or borrow a line-

trimmer. Countless stars shine
by their dying light, our journeys aim
toward a single bright point.
We leave our wakes for our wakings.

 Sandra Garcia Rivera reading at Avid Reader Sunday, April 17
 

THREE HOURS LATER
—Caschwa, Sacramento, CA

It was that time
The end of an era
A candle gone cold
Time for retirement

Jumped on the Internet
Social Security System
Began an application
So far, so good

I easily knew most
Of what was asked
My date of hire
Date of marriage

But for the date
My health coverage
Became effective
I had to save the application

Warned that later
Might be too late
Be careful
Mighty, mighty careful

I ignored the warning
And looked up the information
On another website
Might now be too late

Then returned to my
Saved application
Typed the re-entry number
And completed it, finally!!

It was about 8:30 PM
In California
but in Social Security land
it was already 11:30 PM

Like being stuck with
Washington’s troops
Crossing the icy Delaware
Until 3:00 AM

But I made it across
Warm and dry
Now wait 5 business days
And check the status

JoAnn Anglin reading at Avid Reader Sunday, April 17

WHAT A DEAL
—Caschwa

We found a
Car dealership
That waxed progressive
Featuring prototypes of

Virtual dream cars
Not yet in production
But with ideas that are
Certainly ready to roll:

The Angus
Steer this baby onto
the highway and no one
will dare cut you off

The Virus
Watch traffic just
Melt away, not
Wanting to get too close

The Elvis
Carries that
Unusual sway
That attracts fans

The Hummus
Centuries-old Arab invention
No one can own one
It belongs to the region

The Corpus
Has the finest
Bodywork
You could imagine

The Jesus
No Neutral, no idle
Universally adored
Will take you higher

The Amicus
Go ahead, pile in
There’s always
Room for more

The Ruckus
Enjoy bar brawls?
Just climb into this
battlewagon

The Escargot
For those who want to
Travel at a slower pace
And leave a trail of slime

 Ian Kappos reading at SPC Monday, Apr. 18

FEW WORDS ABOUT THE TUX
—Kevin Jones, Elk Grove, CA

Set a man up with a tuxedo
And you won’t
See him till two pm
Next day.  Or if the rental
Deadline is sooner.
Bloodstains optional.

*
Actually, you never
Really want to know.
Nobody ever gets
It right.  Remember
Your Senior Prom,
Your first wedding.
Yes.  Burn the photos
Now.

*
Dark suit, dark tie,
White shirt
Will get you anywhere
You need to go. Save
The Bond thing.
For
Halloween.
Again, you’ll
Never get it right.

*

Humphrey Borgart
In Casablanca,
Of course.
Almost got it.  But
There’s something
Still not right
About the lapels.
Don’t brood:
I’m here for that.

*

But originally
Riding clothes
To go out for the
Foxes?  Do you
Really want to go there?
Oscar Wilde explaining
It all as the “unspeakable
In pursuit of the
inedible.”  I thought not.

*
And the cummerbund.
Really.  No, no relation
Or mis-spelling of
The voice of Smaug.
It’s supposed to
Support the scabbard
For your saber.  Yes,
I thought so.  And keeping
The open pleats up?  To
Keep your opera tickets
Handy.  No one you
Know, no one I know,
No one we’ve ever
Heard of ever did that.

*

Last things, and I tell you
This from someone who has
Worn more tuxedos (Not
Always my fault) in more
Pastels than most art stores
Have palettes: they somehow
Want you in a tux?  Don’t.
Just don’t.  Hiring actors
Is much cheaper.  Besides,
They look better, and
Seem to enjoy it.

*

Good jacket, black t.  Nice
Jeans and Converse and
They won’t let you in?
Go home.  The people
Are more real there.

 Josh Fernandez reading at SPC Monday, April 18

Thank you to our contributors today, including El Dorado County’s first-ever Poet Laureate, Taylor Graham. And stay tuned for the final word on whether Carl Schwartz’s (Caschwa) retirement application made it through cyberspace.

National Poetry Month finishes up this week: on Monday we have Poetry in Motion in Placerville (6pm) and readers Stan Zumbiel, Albert Garcia and Troy Myers at Sac. Poetry Center, 7:30pm. Nancy Aidé González reads on Thursday at Luna’s Cafe, 8pm. And Saturday is a big day, with Senior Readers Speak at GOS” Art Gallery Studio (2pm), and the all-day 2016 Sacramento Poetry Center Conference beginning at 9am.  Scroll down to the blue box (under the green box) at the right of this column for more info on all of these events and others coming up.

Here is the poster for the SPC Conference so you can see the details of what will be happening. Click on it once to enlarge it:

Today’s LittleNip:

IDES OF APRIL
—Taylor Graham

Insurance and taxes—a tombstone
on the imagination, a darkening,
atrocity against sun of an April day—

shadows making paisley patterns
of honeysuckle vine lacing the oaks,
so many shades of green,

and one black and white tiger
swallowtail canoeing
down the breeze.
 
_____________________

—Medusa
 

April is National Poetry Month!

Celebrate today by heading up to Placerville for 

Poetry in Motion, to UC Davis to hear 

Billy Collins and Aimee Mann, or to 

Sac. Poetry Center to hear 

Albert Garcia, Stan Zumbiel, and Troy Myers.

The Eyes Begin to See

Yellow Iris

—Photo by Katy Brown, Davis, CA

IN A DARK TIME
—Theodore Roethke (1908-1963)

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;  
I hear my echo in the echoing wood—
A lord of nature weeping to a tree.
I live between the heron and the wren,  
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

What’s madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!  
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.  
That place among the rocks—is it a cave,  
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,  
And in broad day the midnight come again!  
A man goes far to find out what he is—
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,  
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.  
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,  
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.  
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,  
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

______________________

—Medusa (thanks, Katy for the glorious pic!)

For more about Theodore Roethke, see www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/theodore-roethke

April is National Poetry Month!

Shearing Through the Night

D. R. and Daughters (Altered Photo)

—Poems and Photos by D.R. Wagner, Locke, CA
 

WE HAVE NO INFORMATION



We were unable to revive him.


No one is supposed to be that color


Except perhaps a lobster, blue, yellow,


White, orange and black in the same body.



His skin looked like ancient Roman glass.


There was an oily sheen that reflected


Light like motor oil mixed with water.



His mouth was broken.  We supposed


He had said something that did not fit in it.


It looks like he was starting to smile


But everything collapsed before it got there.



His car was still shaking.  It kept it up


For about three hours but here was no wind.


And it wasn’t running.  It did not make any noise.



You are not supposed to know any of this.


There was no identification on his body.


By the time the police got there, all that was left


Was the car.



If anyone asks you about this, act like you


Don’t know anything and claim that


You were just reading a poem.  Everyone


Will believe you and leave you alone. 

 Russell's Truck

THE BLANK ROOM



Stairs that go nowhere


No matter how long you climb them.



Against the back wall, can after


Can of lightning, mostly dented.


The labels read, Flower Girl Lightning.


Alive, yet not Alive.



Years ago they had kept harvested


Ice in this room.  Most of the Summer 


It was cool and damp, with little light.


The cutting tools remained in stacks 


Along the walls, gray and dark,


Piles of sharp teeth pointing in 


All directions.



We had made a promise to be here.


It was a way to collect memories 


That could be had in few other ways.

“You should try it,” they had said.


“Nobody has died yet.”  But that


Was a lie.  There were galvanized


Pails full of keys near the door.



In the compound yard, in what 


Used to be corrals, great piles


Of boots and shoes reached higher


Than a two-story building.  There


Were hundreds of them.  Gray and silent


Children roamed over them, collecting


Laces, plying them into great ropes


Used to bind the abandoned 


Ocean liners to the rotting docks.



“Can you believe people still manage 


To live here?”  Ramon asked politely.


“No,” I answered.  “Why do they do so?”


“There is no place else anywhere 


Even remotely like this place.”

THE FOG AT NIAGARA FALLS



So thick it spilled over


The gorge lip, filling


The streets with a dense white


Wall, stealing every sound


The night chanced to create.



A blank stillness


Devouring streets, buildings,

Houses, light itself.


There was nothing else


In the world, only fog.



Baxter and I stepped outside


His home just to see,


Just to hear this kind of voice.



Then we walked in opposite


Directions for a short time,


Turned and ran toward each other,


Arms outstretched, flying past


Each other like thick phantoms


Visible only for an instant.



We did this two or three times.


Each time a surprise,


An event, as we passed


Each other in this peculiar dark.



For years we carved this event


Separately.  Still it remained


The same in both our recollections.


Such is fog.



It holds moments


As singular things,


A permeable loud


Resting upon the ground


For a time gathering


Events and lives to itself.



Dispersing again without a trace.


Except these notes remembering.


Except the friendship recalled,


Our lives somehow linked


Because of it, arms outstretched,


Shearing through the night.



THE HOME OF THE VAMPIRE
                

                with a line by Melissa Studdard


Of course it was a great pile,


Battlements and turrets and half-


Turrets.  Collapsed staircases.


Hundreds of rooms, most of them quite small.


One could spread one’s arms and touch the nether


Walls.  Small windows allowed quicksilver light


Into the rooms.  All color faded.  “Have you 


Learned anything by being here?  A prayer perhaps?”



I saw a small lawn with rows of cages, each


With a cloud of a different color within. 


“I keep these for the various seasons,”


The vampire had said in the same tone


With which he had explained the moats


Filled with stars in nets heaped far below


The water.  “These are from the temples,”


He had said, laughing softly to himself.



Occasionally he would explain


That he needed to touch me.


But I would hand him a rock


And he would be placated for awhile.


Turning it over and over in his hands,


Studying its shape as he held it 


At arms’ length.



“You have a most interesting spine,”


He announced to me as we climbed 


Toward the halls where he kept the whirlwinds.


“Yes,” I said, “it allows me to fly or sail if I must.”


He fumbled with his keys, trying


To find those that fit the dry, yet festered


Wood he used to build the doors to those rooms.


“It took me years to find the correct wood to keep 


These things here.  They love black leaves,


You know,” he added, as he slid the bones


Of the bolts aside and we watched them 


Flash in great rooms lit by constant lightning


Flashes. 



“Will you always live here?” I asked.


“I come here to pray and to recall the taste


Of lips.  I have no time to think or eat properly


Or to rest.  I keep beehives around the castle.


The sound soothes me, as do the rooms 


With the great waterfalls.  Come, I will show


You these rooms.  Have you a taste for blood?”

 Gardens Before the Rain, Locke
 
 

A SMALL SEASON IT WAS



I saw her in the field


And then, a park,


And then, beside the sea.


Fresh as fire, rising like the waves,


All lodgings for the heart.



And I, unable to explain,


Undone before the dawn,


Raised the moment with


A silence, broke it with a song.



She wore the story cloak.


She cut the houses of the wind.


She bent the willow to the ground.


She leapt upon the clouds.



She was not here to soothe


Or to smooth the garments of the sun.


The day explained itself to her


Before the morning had begun.



I drew her to my core


But never touched her more.


I was in love’s own thrall.


All of heaven was a floor.



The path along to the cliff edge.


What do you believe sir?


What is the coat you wore?



See over on the mountain,


The night and the morning


Are walking hand in hand.



When the day was made,


Huddled up in haze,


The weather slept within


Each one us, such a small


Season it was.

SHE WILL BE RIGHT HERE, SOMEONE SAID



I understand that I am trespassing


Where your heart takes transit to comfort


Yourself during the last parts of the day.



I only did it because I must.  I have no moment 


Where I can walk through the house drawing the curtains


Against the coming of the night and shaking the fires


Gently to pull a little more light from them for a few hours.



I too miss the embrace that the wind can give the changing
               light.


I too must know the softness some words can have, filtered


Through a walk along the sloughs beside the darking oaks.


I hear the creak of the masts in the bending of their great
              trunks.



But mostly, I came here to walk with you, knowing that your
              words


Have been here and that the hosts of lovers who moved through


These exact words found solace here for a quick moment,


The smell of your skin, the touch of the leaves like your lover.

________________

Thank you, D.R. Wagner, for today’s fine poems and pix, and we’re sending you our high hopes that your health issues are resolving. D.R. and other Lockians are looking forward to today’s posthumous book release at the Moon Café Gallery in Locke, 2pm, featuring Patricia Hickerson’s new book,  Outcry, from R.L Crow Publications, edited by Cynthia Linville.

In the “nobody ever tells me anything” department, I’ve been advertising the Billy Collins/Aimee Mann Calperformance this Sunday at UCB; turns out they’ll also be presenting their music, poetry and a conversation about the creative process at UC Davis on Monday at 8pm at the Mondavi Center. See www.mondaviarts.org/event/2015-16/aimee-mann-billy-collins?event_id=1631&season=2015

___________________

Today’s LittleNip:



FANDANGO


—D.R. Wagner           

             for Steven Smith



I was in this wading room


Setting the changes


Except the wading was


More like waiting


Just a few small waves


Carrying messages


From friends


Maybe written 


In color so we could


Read through the bottle


About how we got here.

—Medusa
 

—Anonymous Photo

April is National Poetry Month!

Celebrate today by heading off to Locke for
Pat Hickerson's book release, or to Placerville for

Poetic License read-around, 2pm, Placerville Sr. Center,

937 Spring St. (suggested topic: "corner"). 

Photos in this column can be enlarged by clicking on them once,
then click on the X in the top right corner to come back
to Medusa.

How to Use a Sword

—Photo by Katy Brown, Davis, CA

LEARNING HOW TO USE A SWORD
—J. D. DeHart, Chattanooga, TN

I used to have
a sword but it was blunt
and disappointing;
I had no idea how to stand
with a blade, then one day
at a gun show a man told me,
People used to defend their
families in the Civil War
with these things.  Now
I don't even bother to pick
one up, and that's the best
way sometimes, really,
to handle a sword.

___________________

HEROES NEED FICTION
—J. D. DeHart

The strong warrior
reaches for his arrow
but finds it removed
from his narrative,
the brave man thinks back
to page three to remind
himself of how he became
so brave, and if only we had
our own stories to stand
on and remind ourselves
of why we decided
to become noble in the first
place, on the first page.

___________________

GREASE MONKEY
—J. D. DeHart

fur-faced
he reaches for the wrong
part, tweaks it,
pulls it, squeals at it,
then puts it back
so the engine can finally
idle once more.
 

 Year of the Monkey

Moon Café Gallery, Locke, CA

—Photo by Katy Brown

WET BLANKET
—J. D. DeHart

The fire that we felt
burning inside
quickly dispelled,
the word that was spoken
was left behind,
a child crying because
it had been abandoned,
the promise that was made
was just formed from
these clay words, devoid
of meaning, and our energy
felt the moist fabric
dampen us until we said
At least we have each other.

__________________

SASSY TEETH
—J. D. DeHart

she's little miss
sassy teeth
a wise-cracking remark
for any you can
manage, and she's
disappointing at times,
like all humans, but
tiny moments of frill
and good promise.

 —Photo by Katy Brown

RITUAL FOR A LATE AFTERNOON
—Katy Brown

They laughed at us
when we wrapped the cat
in a paisley shawl.

We talked about putting her
in a canoe and setting it on fire
like a Viking funeral
in the pond behind the house.

But the little one said
it would be “an atrocity”
(she just learned the word)
to set a perfectly good canoe
on fire. 

“I’m not sure our insurance
would cover that,” my oldest brother
said—trying to sound grown-up.

We sucked on flowers
from the honeysuckle vine and
squinted at the paisley bundle.

Finally, we decided to bury the old Tom
next to the almond tree—
an old flower pot for his tombstone.

_________________

IF ONLY
—Katy Brown

Time rolls and gathers in swells,
moving toward the far horizon; and
the three of us, spinnakers billowing,
steer our cutters toward a common port.

If only desire were as easy to fill
as a luffing sail;
or faith as constant
as the unfailing North Star.

If only the distances between us
were not so great and full of dark water.
The path of this full solstice moon,
fractured by the wake of my plunging ship,

reassembles itself in the distance—
a shaft of light, tipped by my boat’s prow.
Too much time to think tonight.
Time:  an arrow of moonlight;

a wave, cresting in the distance;
fading memory of the three of us, laughing.
We come from diverse points in the wind’s twelve quarters
—toward a port with a foreign name, filled with beings of light.

 Protected

—Photo by Katy Brown

COFFEE, PLEASE.  NOW.
—Katy Brown

A season of paisley tombstones;
an atrocity of insurance;
a canoe full of vines from the garden

—I claw my way out of the surreal dream
face to face with the calico cat.

____________________

Today’s LittleNip:

PRINCE
—B.Z. Niditch, Brookline, MA

If Michael Jackson
was the King of Pop
memory won't stop:
Prince is gone,
with an angel star quota
in his final "Purple Rain"
singing in Minnesota.


—Medusa, with many thanks to J. D. DeHart and Katy Brown for a hearty breakfast in the Kitchen this morning—as well as B.Z. Niditch for the timely LittleNip!

 Sheer Poetry

—Photo by Katy Brown

Today is Earth Day, and April is National Poetry Month. 
Celebrate by going to the Red Fox Underground Collective 
reading tonight in Placerville at Fausel House Gallery, 

772 Pacific Street, 7pm!

Marathons and Moreau

Poet and Satyrs

—Paintings by Gustave Moreau (1826-1898)

—Poems by B.Z. Niditch, Brookline, MA

APRIL WIND

The last snow is gone
wrapped in a cool sunlight
as an Arctic April wind
intervenes off the coast
which makes me shiver
a poet by the gazebo
near the last swan boat
the oars of a kayak
reach in the back
for new beach sunglasses
a poet questions his path
in his day's diaries
listens to an FM radio
playing Bach and jazz
now at a poetry workshop
hearing a noon theater reading
gives a neighborhood ear
to Amy Lowell, Sylvia Plath
Ben Jonson and Shakespeare
now doing a half-mile run
by the Charles River
in a ten-mile marathon
from an abandoned field
as a melee of rookie players
playing hooky
in woolen yellow jackets
after an off-school night
not caring about their grades
play boisterously at bocce
from their heads to their knees
having their own bacchanals
making a fine racket
reacting as unruly renegades
hypnotized by gritty wine
and strong Sam Adams beer
demanding a group of tourists
leave and out of sheer spite
take cover over Audubon land
full of bluebirds in harmonies,
yet this breeze is cast in respite
passing by an hourglass of fun
this poet leans on Evergreen trees
by the Public Garden swan boats
waiting for the starting gun
over the overcast sky
for the Boston Marathon
with boats along the sea
as a cruising ship floats by.

 Near the Water, 1896

T.S. ELIOT'S SUNDAY MORNING

Here at the docks
the snow bluffs have gone
we have not turned
the clocks back but spring
forward here at the rocks
watching the runners prepare
for the Patriot's Day marathon
awakened by scents and shadows
at T.S. Eliot's Sunday morning
here at St. Ann's
sighting a sorry wounded swan
near the Cape at Rockport
as veterinarians drape him
before he is examined
for to be all alone
is not ever easy
even with emerging sun
simmering as stars on the ocean
by the greensward pavilion
T.S. Eliot knows his memory
is not shaped but had begun
even as a high churchman
not so long ago
searching between two loyalties
of state and expatriate of country,
suddenly he starts to quietly sing
acknowledging the Almighty
enduring the silent chants
while clearly thinking
from his dark pew
of his emerging imagination
and his dying to an ego
in his poetic sublimation,
meditating on Brother Lawrence
whose washing dishes
was his worship made new
or the Little Flower
who cleaned the dirty floor
with a broom and mop
not stopping a task
in a sanctuary's hour
of constant daily supplication
for no one need ask St. Teresa
about her ordinary ease
while writing a French diary
baring future good fruit
in her love offering
bending on her knee to pray
thinking of old Joseph's coat
and cuffs on his rough suit
in many of nature's colors
she could sew and mend,
and how he was sold
into slavery then freed
when his family was in need.
Eliot wishing for peace
on this well known bench
he has visited before
overlooking the flowing sea
in a cathedral's miracle lore
of reaching Gentile and Jew,
remembering Odysseus
from fiery frightening
yet smiling Circe
and of Hermes persuading
our sailor to go to Calypso
and his own hours of journey
teaching him to be enlightened
he was once a wanderer too
in a world without end.

 Jupiter and the Sphinx, 1864

BAUDELAIRE'S YOUNG SHADOW

Maybe the unanimous light
on this sunny Thursday's dawn
runs as the river by him revealing
the Seine's snakeskin reflection
at daybreak hours feeling tired
as a somnambulist wades in
by the shade off-shore
his red eyes glance open
slightly weary in oblivion
with an uneven balance
wanting to be more animated
despite his early morning nausea
sketching a slender drawing
of a Delacroix under a passing sun
and admiring the tiny Renoir print
in his last lady's salon
walking in from her boudoir
he suddenly remembers
that returning hesitancy of feeling
when receiving communion
at last Sunday's kneeling
in his short white pants
yet retaining a confessing belief
of the Three in One,
when he followed a sparrow guide
outside the church
from the high cathedral window
he is still overwhelmed with grief
in his messy narrow adolescence
when days are not assured
trying to hold onto a belief
Baudelaire's young shadow
covers the ceiling floor
and cathedral stained window
as he surly confesses to the priest
in that dark room
of his adamant clenched soul
from his mistress’s scent of sorrow
in a perfumed hint of nausea
still leaving an accented memory
at the smallest slight at school
fearfully spent tearfully wailing
already in beds of tomorrow's pain
as only a worldly poet knows
at he stares at his dreary dress
dreaming of his prisoner's fetters
as the river wind stirs
his itinerant notes on his pad
he will rewrite a quatrain
of quoted lines on "fraternity"
over a park bench
feeling like a sorry cad
writing a letter in his diary
resenting his sore sexuality
as he sentimentally swears
"Merde", pouring the word
out loud in angry bitter French
as he plans his itinerary
to the Morbihan shore
on an April rainy day's leave
and confesses a respected oath
to visit the Lioness of Brittany
acting out his perfected poet's part
actually believing he will never
ever be foolishly tempted
to whore again and in retrospect
pretends to be one of Molière's
never-aging clever fools
upon a long staged corridor
imagines he is whispered about
at a lonely dressing room door
leaving on his vacation plan
as he still wears his thermals
and weeps with an alley cat
half asleep in a ditch
he picks up on the way
to the city terminal
with a cup of red wine
in hand which spills
over his mother's photo
in her woolen winter hat
on the lorry of the train.

 Jupiter and Semele, 1889-1895

ROBERT LOWELL'S DATA

In the Widener library
in Cambridge at Harvard
a younger bard
is going over your data
seeking what knowledge
you gathered in your way
in self-revelation
assured that your wandering
words of language
shadowed your long suffering
in the breakdown lane
now forced to taking
heavy medications
at the mental ward
of suburban McLean's
reading of your pain
that drew me near
though younger
when I froze
writing my early poetry
on paper planes
inscribed in Latin
as I returned my clothes
from the laundry
after playing Chopin
and attending matins
with bread and wine
running into Lowell
on Beacon Hill
being humbled
without resentment
thrillingly telling me
to have courage
though I was trembling
in his audited class
over a sunlit window
instructing me
from space and time
electrified by his poetry
taken off the shelves
from the shadow's abyss
catching a language's fire
that will outlast
times and moments
past comprehensive ages
hungering on the shelves
in an expansive hunger
needing your compliment
in an offbeat arbitrary desire
that was not intimidating
from a fictional discovery
by my climbing ivy into sunlight
your hands open to shake mine
inside the lexicon's dictionary
suspecting to be certainly
at the library all night.

 The Apparition, 1876

SEAMUS HEANEY'S VOICE

His voice in highlights
is an eye in the night air
catching a saying of words
at his dark flame of height
gleams from a voice
whispered in Gaelic
fulfilling into his April birth
it was a glittering dawn
of an itinerant spirit
choosing a poet's abode
in winsome whirlwinds
overheard by Ireland's poet
by spaces outside
as the first sparrow
in the space of a window
who motions us to history
by your overcoming shadow
in the dust of your glory days.

 Salome, 1875

GUSTAVE MOREAU'S SYMBOLISM

Animated from musical symbols
in balanced lyrical glissando
as the nave of noontime bells
chime in the rain's shadows
are heard on the church's steeple
by the sun-stained window
Moreau waits by the Paris metro
drawn with a search for color
as his model is not embarrassed
to pose along the bubbling Seine
waves to him faintly
near the lover's green meadow
as Gustave watches people
along the stream of the river
by ferns and dark willows
in the light April rain
his model in the new midst
of her ruminating position
picks a rose-in-bloom flower
at the crocus edge of shore,
Moreau paints captive images
as he covers his wooden canvas
for the next showing
of his painting, The Apparition
choosing to be understood
by a Muse of knowledge
yet will live in a scarlet abyss
voices his wonder
of a circled body
that each epiphany has an identity
that has implanted a carnation
hid in déjà vu romantic kiss
in his new-found modernity
as he seizes at his off-hand chance
in a recreation of such madness
which reaches the secret nuances
of his studio mistress
yet teaching us how glorious
is a yellow gentian inspiration
by the hummingbirds and bees
at dawn shapes him in a wellspring
in signs, mirages and myths
as Muses of Clio or Apollo
are breathing along the cracked wind
by grackles on bushes of trees
from a cave's neon butterfly
who rises with geometric wings
as spring shadows are rejoicing
from songbirds on nature's ease
along the exiled woods
an ecstatic blackbird sings
for a half hour
advancing new bones in her nest,
we understand a sibilant tone
to an art which will not rest
on any ancient laurels
here on the high museum walls
watching as Moreau thinks
he is elated from uneven dreams
on his Oedipus and the Sphinx
in a balance of purple colors
combing by a new picture inks
his last violet and azalea drawing
of strange angel dream flights
later to be stained
in his Jupiter and Semele
from scant vibrations of angels
we picture his working culture
in a chorus line for us to know
tattooed Salome in his tableau
in a vast silence of ardent mirrors
whose images of Gustave Moreau
falls on his beloved Galatea
wooed from Polyphemus
in Ovid's Metamorphoses
with celebrated presences
along long high corridors
visiting his hallways portfolios
while hearing a trio in a café
play viola, cello and violin
from a musical tempo
playing in an exposure's chin
swaying for us con brio
critics quarrel about his future
of pre-surreal cultural autonomy
as his geometric shapes
and retrospective colors to imagine
The Seascape of Brittany
from the ocean's sea
and star shells
along small figurines
cups and jars
to open our glowing eyes
motioning us back
to whom we symbolically are
as he drapes his painting
still hearing and laughing
at the piano bar's language
along the Alps
knowing hidden images
are collapsing in an eyelid's glance
of a whitened avalanche
knowing there are islands
searching for lighthouse scenes
where the wellspring leaves us
like a hidden enlightened bird
wakes us in Moreau's paradise
waiting at last
for an April birch branch.

______________________

Today’s LittleNip:

I have always thought of poems as stepping stones in one's own sense of oneself. Every now and again, you write a poem that gives you self-respect and steadies your going a little bit farther out in the stream. At the same time, you have to conjure the next stepping stone because the stream, we hope, keeps flowing.

—Seamus Heaney

_____________________

—Medusa, with thanks to B.Z. Niditch for today’s fine poetry!

For more paintings by Gustave Moreau, see www.the-athenaeum.org/art/list.php?s=tu&m=a&aid=367&p=1

April is National Poetry Month, and April 21

is Poem-in-Your-Pocket Day.

 (For info about Poem-in-Your-Pocket Day, see  

www.poets.org/national-poetry-month/poem-your-pocket-day/.)

Selling Snake Oil

 Cliff House, San Francisco

—Poems by David Wright, Sacramento, CA

—Photos by Cynthia Linville, Sacramento
 

RICKY

It was so sad; these elderly grandparents had driven up to
       San Quentin
From Lynwood to see their grandson, Ricky.
Ricky was not doing well.
Ricky had tried to hang himself but a guard saw it in time and cut him down.
A week earlier, he sliced his wrist.
So Ricky was in a striped down cell, on Suicide Watch.

Naked bare mattress on the floor.

Every fifteen minutes a guard verified he was alive and checked a box on a form.

Grandparents did not visit for long.
Three sets of teary eyes.
Then four.
All our lives gone horribly wrong.
I walked them silently out the gate and
watched them head home.

 Cliff House, San Francisco

TENDER MERCIES

Cloister rules confined us to our rooms or the
Little quad area, where I'd sit at the table and
See our flag blow in the breeze.
The trees would bloom with tiny pink petals,
Sinister to a lonely boy away from home.
I'd roam out at night, climbing out a window and
Crawling under a hole in the fence.
I'd wince at some of what I saw in that old
"Blue Movies" movie house, the floors sticky.
The whores I hired practiced the art of giving
Just what I paid for, not a sigh more.
The sky would open up and cry down on me and
I'd climb back through the window, lay in my bed in shame.
Yet, in being half-sated I'd sleep half-well.

 Berkeley Bone Room

DEFIANCE

They brought him out of Carson Section,
Cuffed, wearing only his boxers, bloody rivulets,
Dozens of them, front and back,
Bird-shot from shotguns
The way we broke up fights in the '80's.

This man had just stabbed another con to death.
The gun rail guards had fired a little too late, but they really
Lit him up.
Here he is cuffed, bleeding, surrounded by fifty guards, but still his head's high, he's
Walking calmly and coolly, guards escort him to SQ's hospital.
He's walking like he's in charge, and I half expect the warden to
Ask his permission to pee.

The machismo stance, as a way of life, is a miserable failure.
Still, if you could have seen that man...

BETWEEN THEM

The answer seemed to float just out of my reach.
Here's me, and over there is the answer, and between them is a
Smoke-filled Ford Falcon, my father chain-smoking through the
Desert to Arizona, just six years old.

Between them is a little boy in the "Slow Class" until fifth grade when
They discover his dyslexia, so he catches up "on paper" but never really catches up at all.

Between them is a teen-aged runaway, getting a job on a fishing boat out of
Point Loma, loving it, being a natural as a deck hand, except he gets
Seasick.

Between them is an 18-year-old man-child on a park bench across from the High School,
Prom night, he watches the others laughing, and oh so happy.

Between them are many years driving a taxi, and he knows all the sports scores, and he
Knows where to take them to score, but he must hide his Robert Frost and Dylan Thomas in the glove compartment.

Between them is the night he gets a call that his wife was robbed at work, and
Finds her in the ER, hair soaked blood red, some bastard with a tire iron, and he
Gets his shotgun and goes to the scene and looks and looks...

Between them are popular TV doctor's selling snake oil an silicone as
Poor people suffer and die for lack of medical care.

______________________

Our thanks to David Wright for today’s fine poetry! David's first published poetry appeared in The Literary Humanist,  a literary magazine out of Sac City College in 1975.  Over the years his poems have been published in numerous small presses.  For the past ten years his poems have regularly been published in Coal City Review. He makes his stand in a quiet Sacramento suburb with his wife and four cats.

Many congratulations to Taylor Graham for having been proclaimed El Dorado County's first-ever Poet Laureate! See Medusa's Facebook page for pix by Katy Brown.

Our new Seed of the Week (sorry to be a day late) is Dark Moments. Send poems, photos and artwork about this—or any other—subject to kathykieth@hotmail.com. No deadline on SOWs.

_____________________

Today's LittleNip:

MARTHA AT HOG'S SLOUGH
—David Wright

On some hot July day in our prime
We spent the whole day on that little pier at
Hog's Slough
Catching sunfish
Munching snacks and
Making love on a blanket under a
Wincing sun.
Well, my love, I would have died happy that day.

____________________

—Medusa

 April is National Poetry Month!

My Words to You

—Poems and Photos by Joyce Odam, Sacramento, CA

FALLEN MOON

It’s not as if a sob can tear your throat
the way glass can shatter in a hand
or lies from a mouth of words.

You know the difference.
Constrict that urge. Turn it into a laugh,
one that is sharp and full of danger.

Madness holds
for the moment it takes
to switch from one rage to another.

Let go the tender thought
for one more bitter.
Life is a scar—and so is love.

Remember this lesson.
Look how the searchlight tears the wall,
looking for you, crumpled now,

moon fallen into your eyes,
the night gone blank,
the room too small to hold you.

________________

NIGHT THOUGHTS

He throws his net out
over the cluttered air of night.

His body strains forward;
it gleams in the moonlight.

He catches dreams and worries,
he catches terrors and dyings.

His back is turned to us.
He does not know we are watching.

He does not know we fill his skies
so his net will never be empty.  

                      

(first pub. in Muse of Fire Broadside 2:3, 1997)

THE PLACE I TRIED TO REMEMBER

I cannot describe the place except for the
arched doorway with the fringed awning,
and an iron railing to a small slanted stairway
that curved into a blank wall, and a car that
was parked by the curb. I think it was raining;
the streets were shimmery, and a figure made
of wet shadow brushed by me and went inside.

The car settled into its waiting and fastened to
its reflection. The white wall-face of the building
was streaked with old rain and a wet gray light
that faded deeper into it. The street seemed to
end here—a dead-end place with no further
turnings and no one to ask where I was.

I think I was cold. The building stayed dark.
The doorway did not open again. I stood for a
long time and listened to the soft falling of the
rain and tried to memorize the feeling of this place
that had shifted forward in time—or I had shifted
backward into it—I’m not sure which was real.

_____________________

MIND-MUSIC

Mind in muse:
summer by the sea,
a rented cottage,

music pouring out the door—
our young excuse for being careless
with the long sweet days;

the way we squandered them to life,
like summer’s driftwood
on that changing shore.

TERRAIN

I will take the sad earth of myself
and make a poem.

Hear me.
Speak me well.
Arrange me in lines of sound.
Your eyes will know when to pause.

I will be hills
and more hills.
I will be
bleak weather
and go barren of everything.

I will be
desert stretches of emphasis.
No map will cure me.
I will not come to an end when I am done.

I will begin again,
uphill.
I will begin again.


(first pub. in Parting Gifts)

_____________________

SO I WHISPER IN THE WORDS

Imploring them,     repeating them,
becoming intimate with their meanings,

though that is not important to know.
I want,    I need,   

their texture—
their silent directives.

Old muse of me
hurts to want so much of them,

thinking them necessary to use for language:
that precision,    that tone,      that undertone.

THE MUSE OF REVERIE
after Russian Impressionism (works by twenty-two academy
trained master Russian Artists of the past and present)

She is the center—her own muse—
her hands on her lap, her face in a stare.
Memories rest in layers around her:
the closed distance of her mother,
the mute presence of her father;
the attentive white cat on the lap
of an ancestor—seven lives ago.
She feels herself merge,
tries to pull away,
but the past has got her:

the visions swirl:
the old house she lived in,
the murmuring linger of vanished voices,
the thick scent of flowers in heavy vases,
the road of tall trees down to the lake,
the old cabin on the eroding bank,
the drift of summers,
the place where it snowed—
the polished fruit on the polished table
back to the present room that fits around her.

___________________

MUSE OF REGRET

The Old Ones tell how she would come to them,
with stories of despair, then she would
fade from them like dreams they dreamed.

She left a trail of fears that they got lost upon,
her omens—their belief—became the laws
that everyone obeyed.  They were afraid.

They named villages after her, though versions
blurred; they whispered blessings to each other,
whispered superstitions of their own, whispered
warnings to instruct the next, in case she heard.


(first pub. in No Name Newsletter for Poets, 1993) 

THE MUSE IN HER REFUSAL
(after The Painter and His Muse by Alan Feltus)

She is impervious—as always—to his far-off stare
and his blank canvas and his need to create her—
though she seems real and ready to be created;
he can feel her there—beside him—in the light
that is just right and the need that is so fertile . . .

but this is a tragedy: his face shows it: her self-
absorption proves it—she does not even know
why she waits for him to find her.  She holds
the right moment back—as always—musing on
those times when she was ready and he ignored her.

_____________________

MY WORDS FOR YOU

I cannot find words for you—you
of mute language—keeper of silence,
textureless against texture.

Leaves drift around you from
another page. Are they words?
You watch them fall.

The air is blank, like a white sky.
You are only a drawing.
I love your perfection.

The next page will turn you over.
I will not turn the page, you are
the keeper of what I want to know.

The words that seem to know you
are jealous words.
I cannot get past them.

I want to write over them,
leave you there
without the words of another.

You refuse
my writing of you,
will not help me.

You hold a small book,
tightly closed.
Is that where you keep yourself?

LAST POEM

Farewell
my muse,

I love you not
again.

You have been cruel.
I have been unkind.

And we
have been

unfaithful to each other
all this time;

and we have been
estranged

more times
than close.

And yet
(we brood)

if love
demands so much,

why covet
love?


(first pub. in Portland Oregonian)
 
______________________

Today’s LittleNip:

MUSE
—Joyce Odam

Poet will stop here—will look down road
with long hard look. What here does bode
with word held back—does dark muse goad?
Poor poet. Dark mind. Lost word. Lost code.

_________________

—Medusa, with hearty thanks to Joyce Odam for today’s fine fare!

 April is National Poetry Month!